The Background
George Weston Foods Limited (GWF) is one of Australia and New Zealand’s largest food manufacturers employing over 6,500 people across 58 sites. Globally, GWF is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Associated British Foods plc (ABF) and employs over 100,000 people in 46 countries.
The Challenge
George Weston Foods (GWF) were experiencing issues with their web proxy solution which included increasing risk as the platform approached end of life, increasing overhead costs, browsing performance and stability problems. They were seeking a solution which would be quick to implement, easy to manage and would ensure secure internet delivery without performance and latency issues to users. Furthermore, the solution was required to integrate with their existing Active Directory environment for authentication and authorisation of users based on group membership and permissions. Mobile and roaming users outside the office network also required to be authenticated and protected to the same standards as those on premises.
The Partnership
The Missing Link were recommended to GWF from Zscaler as our size and expertise were a match for their needs.
“The Missing Link have a focused team of specialists that bring the expertise into our business and take the time to understand the constraints that we operate under. The Missing Link team acted as trusted advisors on what the best ‘bang for our buck’ would be and helped us understand what was important versus what was simply nice to have.”
- David Lucas, GWF Customer Solutions Manager.
The Solution
The proposed solution utilised the Zscaler cloud-based Web Proxy for the GWF global network. Zscaler is a global leader and innovator in Network Security, because of constant innovation in their custom cloud based platform, they have a large, rapidly growing and highly satisfied customer base; and they continue to set the pace in the Network Security market. Zscaler's architecture was created from scratch as a pure cloud provider. It can deliver a truly multi-tenant and highly scalable platform by functionally distributing components of a standard proxy to create a giant global network that acts as a single virtual proxy. Any user can go to any gateway at any time for policy-based secure internet access. Zscaler infrastructure comprises three key components; Zscaler Enforcement Nodes (ZEN), Central Authority (CA), and NanoLog™ Servers.
The solution leveraged was the Zscaler Business Suite, with the following features:
- URL Filtering
- Outbound Firewall
- Global Cloud Platform
- Real-time Reporting and Logging
- Inline Anti-Virus & Anti-Spyware
- File Type Controls for Uploads/Downloads
- APT Protection - Standard Behavioural Analysis
- SSL Inspection
- Advanced Threats Protection
- Web Access Control
- Cloud Application Visibility & Control
- Mobile Application Reporting & Controls
Technical Specifications
- 3,200 users across Australia and New Zealand
- Uniform, simple and resilient proxy topology
- Central management and visibility
- Ability to bypass where required
- Ability to inspect SSL/TLS traffic
- Integrations with ADFS for Single Sign-On
- Turnkey Project including Proof of Concept, Detailed Level Design, Implementation & Testing, As-Built Documentation and Operational Guide
Business Benefits
The implementation of Zscaler has allowed GWF to monitor use, enforce complex policies and protect their Internet activity which reduced their risk profile and increased leaders visibility. In addition the implementation eliminated the need to continually update the proxy configuration and GWF were able to focus on the exceptions and policy variations rather than tweaking proxy configurations.
“The Zscaler platform is continually kept up to date with categorisation and profiling of new threats and classification of existing traffic. Being able to focus on what is actually happening rather than reacting to close a new threat has saved a lot of time. Being able to see where our compliance was not 100%, we were able to act early and educate our people on the dangers and implications of not following our policies. This has helped us pro-actively understand patterns and educate our staff about the risks of the Internet before we have a serious incident.”
- David Lucas, GWF Customer Solutions Manager.
